Electrical receptacles for accepting the prongs of electrical plugs to connect an electrical line to a source of electrical power have been designed as self-contained units or for mounting in junction boxes. Electrical terminals or contacts to which incoming power, neutral and grounding wires are connected, as well as other receptacle components, normally are enclosed within a housing means, such as a two-part assembly to form a protective enclosure for the components. The two housing parts may be maintained in assembled relationship by means of screws or other such fasteners installed as part of the assembly operation. Such screws may be easily removed, of course, permitting disassembly of the receptacle by end users of the receptacles.
In efforts to eliminate such extraneous items as screws or other fastening components, two-part receptacle assemblies have been designed with integral latch means to permit assembly in a more rapid and efficient manner. Such latching systems most often are used when the two-part housing assembly is fabricated of plastic material, i.e. each part is unitarily molded of plastic.
One of the problems in providing latching systems in electrical receptacles with multi-part plastic housing enclosures is that the walls of the enclosures often are thin and rather flexible. If latching devices are provided on flexible walls, for instance, it may be difficult to provide a reliable latching system, particularly if it is desirous to make it difficult to disassemble the receptacle or to make disassembly substantially impossible without destroying the receptacle. Consequently, with thin-walled constructions, the walls must .be thickened in areas where the latching devices are provided, or extraneous latching protuberances have been provided, projecting outwardly of the housing enclosure, as was done in U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,087 to Brant, dated Oct. 3, 1989.
The present invention is directed to solving such problems as identified above with providing a latching system in flexible and/or thin walled receptacle housing enclosures, without providing outwardly protruding latch devices and without having to thicken the walls of the receptacle to provide an adequate latching system.